[Koo-per-CHA-ya]= I believe; I trust in

Main menu

Category Musings

Post navigation

Been neglecting this blog to work on a new one. That one is much more specific as it’s about me schooling my girls at home, so if you want the link, just hit me up. I’m trying to remain anonymous on that one, though, so if you hop on over, just dont address me or the girls by name, kplzthnx! 😀

I think that between the FlyLady, reading all the homeschooling mom blogs and reading organizing junkie blogs, things are finally beginning to sink in. I decided I have to stop thinking and talking about what I want to do and JUST DO IT. (Wow, what a concept. :P)

To that end, I put together my list of 2012 resolutions, and I started using a daily To-Do List to dump my brain and check off what I’m actually accomplishing.

The Daily Docket (pic is linked) is great,

but I’ve been using The Pocket Docket:

Either one works if you’re a list person. But, then I realized that even with my lovely Home Management Binder (still a work-in-progress), I’d have to keep printing multiple copies of these dockets and shoving them into my binder only to throw them away by the end of the yr.

I didnt want to do that.

So, I decided to bite the bullet and buy a planner! =O I just havent done that in yrs. Not since I was in college and definitely not after discovering Google Calendar! 😛 But, even though I put all of my appointments on Google Calendar, I dont use the Task function for my To-Do’s. Plus, I dont want to have to always access my phone or computer for the next item on the list. So I put my foot down (against myself) and decided to purchase this:

I’m hoping it’ll be worth it. Even if for just the daily to-do lists and the stickers. 😛 But, honestly, I hope I love it because then I’ll get one every yr and not have to print off list after list or even use notepad after notepad, post-it after post-it (though post-its work wonderfully for my husband and I’m not knocking them!), you get the idea. And I can use my Home Management Notebook for other things, like menu planning. I’m going to get very serious about that this yr. If for no other reason than to practice for the day when we wont be living with my inlaws (really crossing my fingers here), and I cant rely on my MIL for dinner every night. Anyways, I should be taking care of breakfast and lunch, so I’ll start there. I want to provide my husband a nutritious meal to take with him to work. Actually, a few meals. He doesnt eat breakfast at home, and he works 12 hr shifts most days, so he really needs breakfast, lunch and a satiating snack. Once I get that down, I can focus on dinners and eventually meals with both my kids. To that end, aside from the numerous cookbooks and foodie sites I peruse, I went with the FlyLady’s recommendation and bought this:

I had had a sample on my Nook, but again decided to bite the bullet and just BUY IT! I need to start somewhere and it might as well be there. Luckily I have a wonderful Mother’s Helper with me these first few months with Baby Ruth here and she is a great cook who can help me learn some good Chines cooking as well as assist me in trying Western Recipes. (Thanks, T!) I am trying to take advantage of this time to learn to cook, and also to eat better and stay healthy as I breastfeed and attempt to get down to a healthier weight. My husband needs to get healthier, too. And we need to save money so I’d rather we stop buying when I can make stuff. Cant wait to bake bread! 😀

Ok, on to my goals for this yr. Here’s my list:

1. SPIRITUAL GOALS:

a) Word – Finish last yr’s BSF study on Isaiah by March and finish the Acts/Epistles study from several yrs ago (get notes from friends)

b) Worship – Minimum 10mins/day

c) Prayer – Minimum 10mins/day (May start keeping a journal again – I have a moleskin.)

2. FAMILY GOALS:

a) Homeschool Jelly Bean starting in March (17mths old) and keep new blog on it

The FlyLady is really inspiring me these days. I feel like I’m thinking about nothing else, which is evident in how many times I’ve mentioned her in my last few blog entries. I am starting very slowly, taking each day of baby Steps and stretching them over several days until I complete them. Though I did realize that I never actually accomplished Baby Step #1, which is to Shine Your Sink. For some reason I never clicked on the link with the actual instructions. I just thought it meant cleaning your sink… 😛 Oops! Well, must do that sometime. For now, though, I’m working on building my Control Journal and getting used to settling into daily routines.

But, as I’m also planning to close up shop here at work and at church in the next 6 wks, I was thinking today that I should really set some concrete goals for myself in the coming yr. Goals are hard because they can be very overwhelming. We all know how the typical New Yr’s Resolution goes — NOWHERE! 😛 Yea, I really dont want that to happen because I feel like I’m on a good track with the FlyLady and I dont want to be disappointed in myself when it’s a yr from now. I’m hoping that I’ll be well adjusted to my FlyLady routines and Control Journal by the time I give birth in 2 months. I may need more time, but hoping to be at a better place than today!

With that in mind, here are some goals I’m contemplating:

1. Dec-Feb: Give birth, rest and recovery period

2. Feb/March: begin daily exercise (15mins-30mins/day) – possibly a combination of home workouts (WiiFit and exercise DVDs) with a dose of a gym class somewhere, or the YMCA. <– That’s the better option since I can probably bring my 1-yr-old with me and she can have some kiddie class. Gotta look into it.

3. March: Take advantage of our hired help and ask her to teach me some Chinese cooking. (Hope to be sleeping better by this time so I can focus!)

Let’s leave it here for now! I’ll keep thinking, but I dont want to get too ambitious. My perfectionism gets in the way and then I end up not doing anything! 😦 In addition, I’m still working on the Big Project. 😀 I need time for that, so I cant take on too much at once. Plus, getting in shape and eating healthily are my biggest priorities. I have to learn to be a good cook for my growing family.

As I’m going through the FlyLady’s Beginner Baby Steps, I am finally de-stressing about how distressed I usually am when it comes to everything I am responsible for. Granted, her baby steps only pertain to the home (so far – I havent read them all yet), but that’s usually what gets neglected since I’ve made everything else outside the home a priority. I truly hate the pressure that society puts on women to be a perfect wife and mom at the same time as being a perfect career woman, but the reality is that perfect or not, the dishes still need to get done. 😛

In an effort to finally make my home a priority, I am trying to make these small changes and I believe that they will have a huge impact in how I manage my time. What I love about the FlyLady is that she really understands how precious a woman’s time is. So, she doesnt ask us to spend inordinate amounts of time on any one task. 2 mins here; 15 mins there and you can move on to other things. If I am really honest, I can do ANYTHING for small increments of time. It’s the idea that doing a task will take hours of my time that makes me procrastinate. My husband always tells me I should make my To-Do list include the smaller bite-sized tasks that lead up to the completion of the larger task. Otherwise I end up not checking off anything and feeling disappointed in myself. (Where did my husband learn all this stuff??)

Instead of jumping into using a binder, though, I’m starting with an unused notebook. I’m the queen of binders – I have them for my Sermon Notes, BSF Studies, Biblical Equality articles, Lesson Plans for certain yrs of teaching (including this one), and other things. I have a few empty ones lying around that I could use, but I’d rather save the whole project of making a nice binder for later when I’m sure I’ll actually USE it. For now I’ll just make notes in my notebook as I follow the FlyLady’s baby steps and see how that goes.

The last thing I want to mention is that I was thinking about how much I’d love to accomplish in a day (100+ tasks), and how much I actually get done (0 tasks). Well, maybe that’s too harsh, but it feels that way. So, having been inspired once again by the FlyLady, I am going to set a few goals for each day that I can accomplish in just 10 mins. In 10 mins a day, I can do a little bit of everything – decluttering, cleaning, Bible Study, praying, reading, downtime, etc. without feeling overwhelmed. The Bible Study and praying are really huge necessities that have not been accomplished in a LONG while. (Bad pastor! >_<) It’s partly the exhaustion of all the tasks I need to accomplish outside the home wearing me out, as well as my pregnancy, as well as running after a 1-yr-old; but mostly it’s the feeling that I need to do any one thing for hours on end. It’s all in my head. I need to set a timer (FlyLady again), and just set it for 10mins so I can accomplish ONE thing. Yes, this should keep my faux multi-tasking (read: ADD) brain from jumping to different things each minute so that in the end nothing is accomplished. I should stamp my forehead with a sign that reads “未完成!” -__-

I should really be in bed now, but for 10 mins starting tonite, I will read my Bible and do some of my BSF study on Isaiah. (Yes, they’ve started the new yr doing Acts & the Epistles already, but I’ve done that study so I’m going through last yr’s study on Isaiah at my own pace.) I’ve already got my Bible and clipboard with the study questions right next to me. 🙂

I’m a little obsessed these days with reclaiming my journal writing days. There’s even a blog I subscribe to called Inkophile which is dedicated to journals and writing. I’ve also been looking around at handwriting books online to prepare for future homeschooling. I see the state of my students’ handwriting at work and it makes me so disgusted. I mean, really! How can they learn the value of writing Chinese characters well when they have lost the thrill of the art of handwriting all together?! American public school education is very disappointing… But, I digress.

I went out and bought my very first Moleskin journal from B&N right after I returned from URBANA. It’s huge and blank with graph-paper-like tiny grids and I LOVE IT! ^_^ I love the graph paper for keeping things neat. And I’m loving this journal for transferring my loose notes into a coherent book. I’m not consistent with writing in it, but that’s not really the point of it all. After all, I have at least 2 blogs… >_>, my email and a host of other places where ‘memories’ are recorded and stored. I dont need to keep everything in there like I used to do with my journals of old. I have already transferred my notes from the Hillsong Conference this past summer and I’m almost done transferring my URBANA notes. It’s actually really fun to be WRITING again. As opposed to typing, I mean, which I do ALL THE TIME. (A product of my generation, no doubt.)

I plan to use it also to record some of my thoughts and feelings about my pregnancy. I almost want to write my baby notes! Maybe I will and compile them later into that digital scrapbook I was talking about last time. (For Sushi — thanks for the link! I need software for my MAC, like Photoshop, in order to put it all together. Argh!)

As I’ve had to drop my seminary course this semester, I cant use my new journal for one of the purposes I bought it — to record my seminary course notes. BUT, I figure this is God giving me a way to still use the money ppl gave for my seminary class (which I will hopefully be refunded soon), to take these 3 other courses (cheaper and self-paced correspondence) for my PASTORAL LICENSE. (More on that in a future blog.) I will definitely use my journal to record the notes from those courses b/c they’re very self-counseling in nature and I’m sure that I’ll discover a lot.

Going back to what I was talking about in the beginning, one thing I’m definitely going to use this journal for is practicing my handwriting. I am looking at Write Now, which is the adult version of the kids’ curriculum (Getty-Dubay Italic) that I want to use with my own kids. I was thinking of buying a copy, but the link above will take you to the Google open version of the book and almost everything is right there for the reading! So, yay! Saves me $40! 😀 The Portland State U site also has sample pages to download which I’ve printed to actually practice on. There are also practice copy books you can get with the Italic series, so you can practice writing things that actually have purpose.

Just writing about it makes me want to pick it up again! To make things even more interesting for my writing, I’m also using my Muji pens! It doesnt get better than this. 😉

That’s how long I’ve been alive. Crazy! I was born in the 70’s, raised in the 80’s, went to high school and college in the 90’s, and matured in the 00’s. Now we’re in the 10’s. I’ll be growing in marriage, ministry, possibly switching out of my career, and having babies! In 10 yrs from now I’ll prob have 3 babies I’m looking after! 😀 God has been good. I am happy. My husband sent me flowers at work today. ^_^ Something to brighten up the ennui of having to be at work on my special day. 😛 (I gave all my classes exams! Haha! 😉 )

You are a Sage, characterized by a thinking or head spirituality. You value responsibility, logic, and order. Maybe that’s why you were voted “Most Dependable” by your high school classmates. Structure and organization are important to you. What would the world be like without you? Chaos, that’s what! Your favorite words include should, ought, and be prepared. What makes you feel warm and fuzzy? Like Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof it’s tradition! tradition! tradition!Because you love words, written or spoken, you enjoy a good lecture, serious discussions, and theological reflection. Prayer for you usually is verbal. You thrive on activity and gatherings of people, such as study groups. Sages on retreat likely would fill every day with planned activities, leaving little time for silence or solitude.

We need Sages for your clear thinking and orderly ways. You pay attention to details that others overlook. Sages make contributions to education, publishing, and theology. You often are the ones who feel a duty to serve, give, care, and share with the rest of us.

On the other hand, sometimes you seem unfeeling, too intellectual, or dry. Can you say “dogmatic”? You may need to experience the freedom of breaking a rule or two every now and then. God’s grace covers Sages too, you know!

Use this test with your favorite group! Try this test with friends or a small group and learn how your spiritual type adds to your relationships with others. Get our 6-session discussion guide (it’s brilliant): MX Spiritual Types Test Discussion Guide.

I randomly did a Lectio Divina this morning using UpperRoom.org. I get their e-devotionals daily because they are the kind that are designed to make you pause and reflect – something I’m desperately trying to make a habit in this new yr lest my health fail. The devotional always links you to several devotional exercises and I chose to click on the Lectio Divina link today. The Scripture I chose was this:

“Be still, and know that I am God! I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth.”
The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. — Psalm 46:10-11 (NRSV)

I purposely chose it, of course, b/c of truly desiring for that stillness before God, and of course to know Him. And as I read it, I realized that it says BE STILL and KNOW. Pretty obvious, I know! Except that I never connected the two thoughts before! To BE STILL and this leads to KNOWING God. Wow. Not that you absolutely CANT know God in the serving and moving. Just that for me, those are the ways I’ve always known Him. But, when I’m ‘still’ – when I’m in prayer – the real revelations come. I need to explore new ways of being still this yr – silence, meditation, solitude, simplicity. Simplicity starts, I know, with getting rid of my many many books! 😛 (And my MIL is hoping I’ll convince the DH to get rid of his as well, lols!)

Another form of ‘stillness’ in my life has to come in the form of
getting away from this damned internet! -__-
Sigh. I hate being a slave.

BTW – I went to B&N to get a new journal – a nice thick moleskin graphpaper-like one. I like the graph paper. Keeps everything neater IMO. Took the first page to write my New Yr’s Resolutions. I would love to go thru all my old Conference/Convention Journals and take the important notes and transfer them to the new journal since I dont need all those notebooks… Too much work? I think it may be. Sigh! Besides, I have to go digging to find the older ones, which means I have to finally get my act together and clean out my closet. Grrr… Maybe I should just do the recent ones – Reload Youth Conf from last Jan, and URBANA, from which I’ve just returned. That’ll be a little easier. I wanted to transfer my seminary notes, too… Better do it now before I start class again in a few wks. Aiya… Thank goodness, just one OT class at ATS Manhattan ctr this semester, and hopefully I can purchase that first course I need for my pastoral license! 😉

Power Quote

HP Quotes

"By all means continue destroying my possessions. I daresay I have too many."

"I will only truly have left this school when none here are loyal to me... Help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it."

"I would assume that you were going to offer me refreshment, but the evidence so far suggests that that would be optimistic to the point of foolishness."
~Albus Dumbledore - best Hogwarts Headmaster period